Erstes österreichisches Museum für Alltagsgeschichte

The first Austrian Museum for Everyday History stands in Neupölla, a village in the Pölla market town within the Waldviertel region of Lower Austria. Housed in the former culture hall at Number 10, it opened in 1997 to mark Neupölla’s 700th anniversary of first being recorded as a market. The museum is run jointly by the Pölla local authority and the Neupölla village renewal association, with art historian Friedrich Polleroß as its director since the start. Its six rooms cover 140 square metres and display nearly 1,000 objects tracing rural life from the 17th to the 20th century. The displays are grouped by themes such as parishes and faith in the Gothic and Baroque eras, rulers and subjects under absolutism, markets and crafts from the 17th to 19th centuries, housing and property, cooking and eating. Separate sections recall the once-important household weaving trade and the shoemaker’s workshop of Josef Krammer, who worked here from 1904 to 1988. A special exhibition tells the story of the Walter family, who owned the building from 1752 until 1955. Their lives as shoemakers and small farmers illustrate the social position between the local middle class and smallholders. Alongside this family portrait, the museum shows the wider political and social changes of the time.